If you do not think that Bush's numbers being in the toilet (lower than Nixon's) have the GOP worried, then I would say you have your head in that same toilet as well. It's pretty much writing on the wall that if (or more accurately when) the Dems take Congress in 2006, Bush will find himself being impeached. And this time the neocons wont have Delay around to re-district.

And speaking of Delay, I don't think it matters if Scalia himself were presiding over his case. Delay's dead in the water, and the neo-cons don't want anything more to do with him. Same can be said with Libby, with Rove and Frist standing in the on deck circle.

And B. Boxer doesn't shake, unless she's got her hands around the neck of some neocon. Lieberman on the other hand...

"grass-roots conservatives"...don't give a rats ass in hell about the soon to be scarce...boxer.

boxer is shaking because she is powerless to stop the conservative judges going to preside over the supreme court...

delay...is a separate issue and "guilty until proven innocent"...that may help him slide out of this one, as well...he really had to go...and he is gone.

bush approval rating is "bwackwards" (aye like that new word)... "bunk" and "bull"...even if the approval rating were 80% in his favor...aye would not buy it...that is a load of corporate media darn.

my head has been measuring the situation by what is happening on wall street...my resolve sees the dems "swirling" and the water pretty still in the republican camp.

The only thing that was swirling were the thousands of poor african americans left for dead by the administration down in New Orleans. That atrocity pretty much sank the neocons within the african american community.

And instead of watching wall street (which really is pretty stagnant)you should keep your eyes on gas and heating. This is what is killing the neocons domestically. Unless they can do something about these, they are going to suffer more than they know.

And Boxer doesn't have to stop Bush's nominees. The republican party is doing a pretty good at it themselves.

Report: CIA holds terror suspects in secret prisonsNEW YORK (AP) -- The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement, the Washington Post reported.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents, the paper said Tuesday.

The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism, the Post said.

It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.

The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country, it said.

The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held.

Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.

While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites.

To do so, officials familiar with the program told the Post, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.

But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military -- which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress -- have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system.

Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.

Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

The Washington Post said it is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials.

They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.

The secret detention system was conceived in the chaotic and anxious first months after the September 11, 2001, attacks, when the working assumption was that a second strike was imminent.

Since then, the arrangement has been increasingly debated within the CIA, where considerable concern lingers about the legality, morality and practicality of holding even unrepentant terrorists in such isolation and secrecy, perhaps for the duration of their lives.

Mid-level and senior CIA officers began arguing two years ago that the system was unsustainable and diverted the agency from its unique espionage mission, the Post said.

lmao...I was actually listening to neocon talk radio the other day just to see what type of hate and lies were being spewed that week. There were all these callers who were saying that they were no longer "Rebublicans" but "grass roots conservatives."

Looks like the neocons have found a new catch phrase to distance themselves from the sinking ship known as the Republican Party.

I'm sure in the coming weeks Scott McClellan will be using the same terminololy.

aye can't subscribe to the whole conservative zshite...but aye think it is funny to see people like janine garafalo get their feathers ruffled when they hear..."grassroots conservative" its like a "biatch slap".

Report: CIA holds terror suspects in secret prisonsNEW YORK (AP) -- The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement, the Washington Post reported.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents, the paper said Tuesday.

The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism, the Post said.

It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.

The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country, it said.

The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held.

Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.

While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites.

To do so, officials familiar with the program told the Post, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.

But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military -- which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress -- have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system.

Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.

Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

The Washington Post said it is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials.

They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.

The secret detention system was conceived in the chaotic and anxious first months after the September 11, 2001, attacks, when the working assumption was that a second strike was imminent.

Since then, the arrangement has been increasingly debated within the CIA, where considerable concern lingers about the legality, morality and practicality of holding even unrepentant terrorists in such isolation and secrecy, perhaps for the duration of their lives.

Mid-level and senior CIA officers began arguing two years ago that the system was unsustainable and diverted the agency from its unique espionage mission, the Post said.

the washington post will go to great extents to pound home the treatment of prisoners as their mantra...with newsweek adding the color photography.

and aye thought that the prisoners in northern china had it bad...the washington post should just do an exclusive expose on world prisons...aye might read that.

Both, and nobody is denying that. There is a such thing as "magnitude," though.

well...at least one can't get impeached for that...

now...is there magnitude in "heavy construction" and "murderous despot removal?"

I think Bush should get impeached and I KNOW Libby is going to get impeached if he takes the stand. I would give my left leg to impeach Cheney, Rummy, Bush and Rove.

Does anyone want to pretend to be anyone of those people and let me impeach you?

Well, with Bush's approval ratings sitting at the bottom of the ocean, the republicans are pretty much shaking in their boots with the 2006 elections coming up. you can pretty much bet that when the Dems take control of Congress, Bush will be walking the impeachment plank. And now with Libby being indicted with future trials coming up, along with Delay's trial, the Hariet Meirs debacle, Cheney most likely to be investigated, no solution to Iraq anywhere in sight etc, it doesn't look too good for the neocons.

I saw this as early as 2004, when the Dems lost. They are bent on destroying the Bush presidency, so much so that it's now mirroring the Republicans' hatred for Clinton.